HungryChris

Rotus, not sure what M.R. is , but suddenly feel the need to point out that Debbie and I will be sharing Irish Coffee when I'm done with the shoveling.

This weather is for the birds!

I picked up a few essentials as well. Shoveling is less of a chore when an Irish coffee is your reward.

Mucke's kielbasa, baked with onions and hot sauce, scalloped potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Not elegant, but quite adequate.

Fried local (Stonington) sea scallops, spicy kimchi tarter sauce and a salad.

I am interested in hearing about your findings. HC

Baked stuffed shrimp using broken pieces in the stuffing made with Ritz-like crackers, chopped shallots, green onions, garlic, parmesan cheese, butter and dry sherry. The shrimp to be stuffed are cleaned and prepared. The broken pieces are cleaned and sautéed with butter and the garlic, shallots and green onions, then chopped and added to the dry ingredients and the pan deglazed with copious amounts of sherry which is added to the stuffing. These are U-15s.

Another mortadella sandwich, this time with zucchini ribbon and onion pickles, the last of the homemade bread and an espresso as an after thought..

Watercress salad, smoked salmon spread crackers.

Shelby, I had a feeling that being able to properly bread the PC chicken for frying was going to be an issue. How was the texture and flavor of the PC chicken that was then fried? HC

This is my favorite so far!

rotuts, I imagine you can probably get some great mortadella as well as another favorite of mine, finocchiona salami in the north end. HC

Just returned from Cranston, RI in pursuit of my kimchi of choice, Kimchi Pride and decided to celebrate with a kimchi dog. I chop it up to give it the consistency of relish.

Years ago, there used to be a regular poster here named Tommy. Tommy, if you still post, my apologies! He now has his own site called Tommyeats.com. Tommy talked about spaghetti carbonara in Rome at Ai Tre Scalini (Three little Steps {from The coliseum}). I think it included some mention of "hold the cream, I'm begging, ya". We visited Ai Tre Scalini a few years ago and Deb absolutely loved this dish there! Tonight, I threw caution to the wind and took a long overdue stab at it. We both loved it and I will add it to the go-to list with simple ingredient dishes.

I have thyme, chives, and sage that comes back in the patio wooden planters every year. The rosemary is almost always a casualty, brought in or left out. Last winter was the first time I was ever able to keep rosemary alive inside and it paid a price. I am trying it again this winter. The one on the left is the survivor and the one on the right I bought last spring. I was always afraid of over watering, but after they both survived a very wet fall, I think wetter is better than dryer.

White clam pizza and Caesar salad. I find that homemade bread is best done in 2 loaf batches. Unfortunately we can never seem to go through the two before they go stale. The salad croutons are one of my many solutions.

Thanks for the crepes, I second the best laid plans comment. In my case I got a really fresh Point Judith cod fillet which we had with some scalloped potatoes and Brussels sprouts. Even though I had the camera on the table, at the ready, we had both tucked in without a photo. Oh well, maybe next time.

Mortadella and kimchi sandwich on toasted homemade bread with tomatoes and pickles on the side.

Sparren, is this a normal meal for you, or do you want to share what the occasion is? I love caviar, but tell us a few details, please.

Chicken salad and salad, smoked salmon spread and a few pickled onions.

While king crab is my fave, when I see large, clean, snow crab at a good price, $4.99 a lb in this case, I plan a meal. When I was a young man with his first job, the local A&P had a big bin of frozen, self serve, king crab, broomstick sized legs and claws at 69 cents a pound. I think that was one of the first meals I bought for myself. Tonight, we were happy with this.

I just took this hickory smoked salmon off the smoker. For some reason I like it cold better than hot. We'll probably have this as an app the next few nights.

Cuban Mojo Rotisserie Chicken Simple, but killer good! I like to truss the bird before it goes into the marinade. This just makes the follow on steps easier. This baby has spent the night in the arms of Morpheus (and olive oil, garlic, orange juice, lime juice, cilantro and a little S&P, all "zipped up" by an immersion blender). Here she is just out of the marinade. Beautiful, isn't she? Loaded up on the rotisserie. . I just got a stand-by generator that runs on propane and bought my own twin 120 gal propane tanks for the purpose. I had them run the gas line to my gas grill. No more worrying about running out of propane half-way through!!! Here is what we have been waiting for. I served it with garlic cilantro lime rice and broccoli rabe.

It is supposed to get bitterly cold tonight, so I just cleaned out the last of the cold frame lettuce for a big salad tonight. Not bad for Jan 3 in CT.

Stuffed boneless chicken legs. Boning out the legs gets easier with practice. Google will turn up several demos. The stuffing is garlic cooked spinach, crumbled blue cheese and pine nuts. I like to start out with chicken leg quarters because they give you a little extra skin if you peel it away from the backbone before removing it. The removed bones makes a great gelatinous stock. Roll the whole thing up, starting at the small end so that you can use the flap of skin to overlap. truss it up in string. I have done this a few different ways. The string is the most tedious, but produces the best results. Another method is to roll it up on a sheet of aluminum foil and then roll the whole thing up twisting the ends in opposite directions like a tootsie roll. The foil packages are then poached in chicken broth, but the string trussed ones shown here are browned in a skillet. and any unused spinach added along with a few more pine nuts. Then just barely covered in a good tomato sauce and baked at 375 F for 2 hrs and chilled. Once it is chilled, skim off the chicken fat and cut off the strings. Add a little more sauce. Cut in half if the legs were big. Reheat and serve.